The Missing Part
by captainfuckingamerica
Summary: She doesn't understand why he left. Steve/Natasha


Bruce leaves, and she decides it's because she's barren. He's over the lifestyle - has been since the beginning - and he wants something that she can't provide.

He works beside her everyday, training new vessels, new weapons, new avengers. He watches her fall in on herself. Her tired, pale eyes sink into her pretty face, and he often catches her staring at nothing, her face drawn, full lips parted. He remembers her kiss, and though she is nothing but danger and sharp edges, she tasted like strawberries. He wonders if she still does.

She tries to figure out why Bruce doesn't want her. She doubts he isn't attracted to her - few men aren't. But it's her heart, the one she handed over so willingly, eager to have somebody strong protect her, cherish her. She's surrounded by amazing men, but she's worthy of only her own kind: monsters.

She's no woman. She can't bring life. She's killed a thousand men, watched hundreds of thousands more die. She reached out to Bruce to see if she could be loved. When he left, she got her answer.

"Natasha."

They're sitting at a table, and the light through the window's faded to a deep indigo. People have long since cleared out of the dining area, and they're the only two that remain, sitting shoulder to shoulder.

"Natasha, I know you care about maintaining your girlish figure, but I don't think a plate of dinner's gonna ruin bikini season."

She looks at the food in front of her for the first time. She pushes her supper around with a fork.

"Seriously, Nat-" _Since when did Captain start calling her Nat?_ "-Eat."

She stands up and empties her plate in the compost. His chiseled face frowns in her direction. She pulls the sweater she's wearing tighter around her body, remembering when she stood in front of Bruce covered by the same garment, revealed to him something she'd never said aloud before, ready for him to take her if he so choosed.

"I'm so tired," she admits, surprise at her honesty.

His eyebrows pull together. He places his hand on her thigh, and she's struck by the intimacy of it. This man has carried her away from hell, protected her, confided in her by admitting that he trusts her. In a world where she hadn't been ruined, she would love the idea of them.

But looking at his strong features, his blue eyes that still carry an innocence she never possessed, his capable hand on her leather jeans, makes her empty heart pang with sadness. He's too fucking good.

She lowers her eyes from his. He says, "Are you feeling okay?"

She feels incomplete, lost, foolish for thinking she could ever receive compassion. "I just- I need-"

Before she knows it, his arm's around her waist. He could tell she was feeling faint before she even realized it. She closes her eyes and leans against his shoulder, drawing in a long breath. The memories from her hellish childhood, her torturous graduation, her captivity, and most recently her abandonment gather like storm clouds behind her eyes. She squeezes them shut, suddenly having an irrational premonition that her heart's going to stop beating as she rests against Steve's arm.

His voice is low in her ear. "Talk to me."

She shakes her head slightly, managing to tell him that she's okay. He must not be assured, because he wraps his arm tighter around her waist and leads her to her room. He lays her against her mattress, then takes the other side, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and pulling her to his chest.

She wants to tell him to leave. She wants to kiss him. She wants him to have his way with her, provide her with some sense of comfort, even if it's completely physical, as she knows it would be.

She closes her eyes, and memories of iron tools and cool restraints filter on the back of her eyelids. She remembers them cutting into her and gasps, feeling the sting of tears on her cheek.

"Hey," Steve says, running his hand over her hair. "Come on, you're all right. I got you."

It's Steve's quiet reassurances that are her undoing. She cries, and he holds her until his shirt's damp underneath her cheek. When she remembers how to breathe, he lifts her face to look up at him, wiping away her tears. He looks into her eyes, then at her lips, and he realizes how near they are. But still he aches to be closer.

Her weakness and lethargy fall away when he brings his lips to touch hers. She refuses to let her heart flutter under his kiss, but she takes as much as he gives. Before she knows it her body's on fire and he's taking off his tear-stained top, then removing her cardigan. He kisses her shoulder and asks her what she wants. Her lips find his, and she voices her response against his mouth, resting her nose against his cheek when she says, "This."

She's not thinking about Bruce when Steve grabs her thigh, pulls her to him, rough, and then kisses her clavicle, nothing if not tender and careful. He's an earnest lover, gentle and aware of his own strength, unafraid to display his need for her and his unabashed arousal. She forces herself not to love him when she makes him cry her name, when his perfect eyes meet her own. All the while, she reminds herself that this man, full of goodness, deserves somebody equally filled-up. She's empty.

But, God, when she's with him, she wishes she wasn't. He makes her wish she knew when to give and how to take.

It's after they fall together and he collapses against her, pressing his forehead against her neck, that she voices her betrayal. "He left," she tells him.

She wants Steve to tell her what she already knows; he left because she's unlovable. But instead he grips her waist, pulling her against him as he moves to his side. "He's a bastard."

"You didn't seem to have any objections while it was happening."

"Because you were happy." His voice is low. She shudders against him and he pulls the comforter around her, mistaking her reaction to his tone of voice for a cold chill. "But he hurt you. I don't want you to hurt anymore."

She explains to him that she can't provide children or security, and love is too fragile for something fierce such as herself. "You're not a creature," the love of her life corrects. "You're human."

She shakes her head in disgust. "Barely."

"You're super human." He wishes he could protect her for the rest of her life. From fire and bullets, yes, but also from idiots like Bruce Banner. He disproves what she was certain was impossible with three simple words. "I love you."


End file.
